People We Hear About

New Zealand Tablet, 24 March 1910, Page 468

People We Hear About

• Of the nine members of the new Congested Districts Board appointed 111 Ireland, five are Catholics. The Bishop of Kaphoe, who did good work on the old Board, is reappointed; and. he has a colleague, the Bishop of Kerry and two parish priests of wide knowledge of South-Western Ireland, father O'Hara, of Kiltimagh, and Father Glynn, of Carrigaholt. . ' . ' We understand (says the Dublin Weekly Independent) from a cable source that Lord Aberdeen will not again take omce as Viceroy for Ireland. Lady Aberdeen is arranging to take a house in Dublin, so that she could from time to time keep in touch and help on the various philanthropic and charitable works with which her Excellency has been connected. Thus it is probable she would spend a considerable part of her time in residence in Dublin. The eightieth birthday of the Emperor Francis Joseph of Austria, which occurs on August 18, is to be celebrated with great pomp by the Austrian Court. The Emperor enjoys excellent health, which enables him to undertake a vast amount of work relating to State affairs. At five o clock in the morning the Emperor is in his study, which he does not quit until nine o'clock. His life is so methodical that it is said to border upon the monotonous. Twice a week he receives those who have complaints to bring before him or favors to ask. His Majesty is endowed with a memory most retentive, even for trifling incidents. His one recreation is reading. His life is so simple that a contemporary declares that his Majesty does not expend more than about eight francs a day on his table. An English journal takes note of the difficulty which public speakers have with their hands. Mr. Lloyd George has a habit of extending his arms and twitching his cuffs into notice; Mr. Balfour holds loosely the lapels of his coat, and never lets go; Lord Hugh Cecil and Mr. Birrell resemble one another in this, if in little else, that they are always' nervously engaged in rubbing their hands, or bending back their fingers. And so on. Mr. F. E. Smith apparently gets over the difficulty, when he is conscious of it, by thrusting his hands into his pockets. When he arose to address a meeting in Liverpool the other day ho assumed this attitude, and a member of his audience promptly got up and solemnly suggested that the speaker should take his hands out of his pockets. 'No, I wont/ said the lawyer crossly. When at the height of her popularity, Madame Patti, who recently celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of her appearance as an opera singer, and whose voice, it has been estimated, has earned her something like £BOO,OOO, was not always inclined to obey the behests of the illustrious if they occurred at an inconvenient moment. She once went to sing for the first time in Homburg. Now, the gallant old Emperor William was there, and when the young diva was presented to him he asked her to join him at seven o'clock the next morning on the promenade whilst he drank the waters. The next morning she did not join the illustrious water-drinker. ' The Emperor, amazed, sent his equerry to know if she was indisposed. 'I am very well, indeed,' said Patti; 'and you may tell his Majesty that not for him or any other king in this world does Patti get up before seven o'clock in the morning to see him drinking water.' . The old Kingfor he was King thenlaughed heartily when he heard the message. The Duke of Sutherland is perhaps the best locomotive engineer in the British peerage, and could earn a living at the work did he so desire. A private railway, thirty miles long, connects Dunrobin Castle with the main line, and both the Duke and his wife are experts at handling the trains over this stretch of track. The only other privately owned railway in Great Britain is a three-mile circular track in the grounds of Hillsborough Castle, one of the country seats of the Marquis of Downshire. Here an engine, declared to be one of the most perfect ever built in England, affords the Marquis diversion in plenty, and he is as capable a fireman as he is an engineer. The Duke of Portland has no private road, but he has to his credit several thousands of miles as engine driver of regular trains, the paid engine driver riding in the cab and enjoying his novel vacation. Several other titled persons take an absorbing interest in machinery, and the Viscount Cole, elder son of Lord Enniskillen, worked as stoker on board a battleship from Australia to Gibraltar. The Duke of Connaught has had practical experience running a locomotive in Egypt, and not long ago the young Khedive of Egypt, on a trip to . England, put in an entire morning firing on the locomotive, alighting at the end of the run as dirty and as greasy as the regular fireman whom he replaced, to the great horror of the reception committee.